


Issue

by HPLovecraftHadAPetPony



Category: Deltarune, Undertale (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 02:19:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16484225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HPLovecraftHadAPetPony/pseuds/HPLovecraftHadAPetPony
Summary: Don’t read this until the 24 hours are up





	Issue

**Author's Note:**

> Told from Susie’s perspective and will update with each chapter of the game that comes out

The thing is that you can’t remember a single thing in your life ever being right. From your parents, to the school, to the locked doors in the woods, and all the way back to Kris. You never liked the way they looked at you, never liked the way they weaponized silence. Kris makes steel traps out of inaction that everyone is bound to fall into, but nobody can prove. You’ve hated them without reason and they hate you back, but only you seem to get punished for it. You both hate the world, but the world only hates you back. Kris is untouchable. They weave through consequence like it’s nothing. It pisses you off beyond belief, so yeah, sometimes you eat some fucking chalk.

Chalk doesn’t taste like anything. Skin doesn’t taste like anything either, no matter how convenient it would be for you. The blows don’t hurt and the roses don’t smell like anything and everything in your life is dilated except for you and them. The world is wrong and you both know it. They have to. They have to know it too.

Your mother tells you that you have no ambition. She tells you lots of things that aren’t worth the dignity of repeating, but maybe that’s true. You wish that maybe she would bother to understand why you have no ambition, but that would require intelligence that she has proven she lacks. Not just her, though. Everyone. Something is wrong.

You hate walking by the bar. You hate walking by the river. You see holes by each one. There is a socket, sometimes filled with blue but most often empty and apathetic. There is a shallow hole near the flower shop where nothing ever grows. When you see them, they make you feel terrible. More so than usual, anyway.

Your mother, or maybe the state, still forces you to go to school. You hate to be there but you hate to not be there and there is just no way out. More than that, you hate to be next to Kris for reasons previously mentioned but also because the kid is smarter than everyone in this goddamn town and still gets Fs on your projects. No ambition, you guess. Or maybe just a different ambition entirely. Like you give a shit.

But you do. You really, really do care what this kid thinks. They won’t even grant you the satisfaction of knowing.

Sometimes reality hits you and sometimes it slips out from underneath you and neither are good but one is better. It is the latter and it is the latter where you wake. It is cold and it is dark but is it real? It is the most real you’ve ever felt but it can’t be. This isn’t the reality you know, you think, glancing back at the body beside you. And if this is the one they know, you’re not going to stick around. Who knows what happens to people in places like this? What happens when a corrupt person is corrupted? You don’t intend to find out.

Instead, you intend to find a way out. They will catch up or they won’t and it makes no difference. Maybe they’re evil, really, or maybe it’s you. Maybe both? For all the ways that you’re the same and all the ways that you’re different, the arrangement worked out so that you hate them more than anything. Well, almost anything. It’s a long and competitive list.

Ralsei makes the list way faster than you expected anyone was capable of. It takes you a long time to pinpoint why. You’re bad with feelings and junk. Why bother when it all feels fake? So, you find lesser things to hate about him. For starters, he’s a dork. He dresses like a muppet. He has delusions of grandeur like a little kid. You can’t pinpoint his age and that unnerves you, but you don’t think he’s any younger than you or Kris. He has no right to be so...naive.

You almost call him stupid and then you get pissed off again. He’s not any dumber than Kris - both of them are scary smart. At least Kris has the decency to be mean about it. But Ralsei is so nice. You don’t know if it makes you angry or scared. 

You hate them both less when they’re not around you. Proximity to you makes one hateful, which is entirely unsurprising. There’s a better reason, though. You know they don’t want you. Kris hates you and Ralsei thinks you’re stupid. They don’t want you for you, they want you for your strength. You are the monster in their story, an unfortunate necessity. Then they want to deprive you of it, they won’t allow you to do the only fuckin’ thing you have ever been good at and-

Lancer is really funny, actually. Really funny, once you get to know him. Like before, it’s hard to pinpoint his age, but you gather that he is younger than you. He is not nice to you. He is not condescending or apathetic towards you. He won’t make you walk in his shadow because he isn’t tall enough yet. More than that, you can tell that Lancer is as uncomfortable with all of this as you are. Still, he doesn’t make you dredge it up and he doesn’t want to either. You have a kindredness that you both skirt around and you like it that way. Both of you break your rules when you team up and you break them even more when you get attached. The rules are gonna need a cast, that’s how badly you broke them!

When you’re with Lancer, something inside of you stops aching. There is less to worry about. You hate to worry and you hate school and you hate that town, but you have fun with him. More than you thought you ever could. Even when Kris and Ralsei show up, you don’t feel that same anger. You start to think maybe hate is the wrong word for what you feel. But before you can pinpoint that, thank god, you feel something else entirely. 

Something is easing and you don’t know what but it makes you feel better, more than you have in a while. Kris isn’t as insufferable nor as unmovable as you though. Every once in a while, you almost see an expression on their face. Ralsei becomes almost endearing and not half as condescending, despite nothing changing about him at all. It takes you a while to understand just what has changed. Your perspective is shifted with the world. You’re happy to be with Lancer, too. Scheming is fun, but you do want to get out of here. And whatever has to happen with his dad, you’re glad you don’t have to do it alone. He doesn’t have to do it alone.

Then he runs. As you said, nothing about your life is right.

Nothing is ever right, you think as you wake up in the cell. You get out with the only way you know how then run into another thing that you’re bad at. But you don’t mind asking Ralsei. You don’t even mind asking Kris. You’re not angry anymore even though you think you deserve to be. Then, the puzzle is solved and you get to the hall.

Nothing is ever right. Nothing is ever fucking right in your life. Your best and maybe your only friend betrays you and lied to you and won’t fucking move and

You hurt him. You almost kill him. You really almost did it. You probably would have, wouldn’t you?

But he doesn’t hit you back and he doesn’t even move when you try to. You can’t. You’ve failed at the one thing you’re good at and you decide you don’t like being good at it anymore. 

“Are we still friends?” He asks.

In silence, you promise to prove it.

Lancer is your friend. He won’t hurt you even if he should and you decide that you don’t want to hurt anyone either. You’ll do it how he wants you to. You’ll do it how they want you to. At this point in the journey, you’re experiencing a feeling commonly known as “Love”.

Love beats in silence within the elevator. 

Kris does not talk, but you promise it to Ralsei. You feel like maybe you owe him that - without him, you would never know how to deal with The King. You still don’t, but it’s better with him there. He is patient with you. Kris is protective of you. You start to think that maybe you are worth more than muscle and meanness. 

Love beats like a drum when you see Lancer and burns when his dad touch him. It’s rough and violent and familiar. You notice how small Lancer really is. You think that they both notice too. It is not a question of pride or his life. Pride was never a part of it. You kneel and your friends do at your side. You’re a hero and for once you actually feel like it. The motions come to you like clockwork. 

Lancer is able to free himself and runs off behind you. As he does, you step to block him from the view and from the aim of his father. Kris and Ralsei rise to their feet next to you and the air is strong with tension and power. 

You give him hell, but your aim isn’t to kill the King. The thought doesn’t even occur to you. As the three of you move in tandem against him, the message is clear: Endure. You are stronger than him. It’s a matter of waiting and surviving the wait.

You do it with ease. You’re close to winning. He is down and he is willing to talk and how could you be so fucking stupid.

You would blame Ralsei had you not been just as blindsided. Everything you hate to feel comes through you at once and it is messy but it is short lived.

Kris is thrown back. He calls them the leader. He aims the weapon at their inert body. You aren’t angry. You feel something else entirely. It is blinding and beautiful. You aim for his back and fire just before he turns on you.

There’s the swarm of an uprising before he can get any further. Lancer is there and you see each other before the chaos ends. The King is taken away. The land is restored under Lancer’s rule. The heroic part of you is satisfied. The part of you that isn’t a hero is a little bit sad but very, very proud.

And just like that, it’s time to leave. Kris makes you go back to say goodbye. It’s more painful than you thought it would be, but there is just so much happening it’s hard to fixate on just that. Lancer looks so happy. Kris leads you upstairs to the exit again. On the way, you pass Ralsei. He can’t come with you. It’s so obvious, but it’s still kind of shocking. He’s been here all along. You’re going to miss the little dude.

Then he buries himself in his hat and you see it and

You think back to what you felt the first time you heard him speak. The Prince of Darkness? A storyteller. There is a story being told here. You’re just a character in it. You’re a puppet on strings, even as you think you’re safe. 

Kris hurries out and you follow them, forgetting what you felt. You move fast so that you can’t understand and you wake up at home. Things feel less real than they are supposed to. Kris is quiet again and their armor is off. There is no trace of where you’ve been.

You leave Kris in the school as you walk home. As you do, you start to think that maybe you and Lancer are the only real people here. When you get home, you realize that Lancer isn’t there at all.


End file.
